If you want to know how sick our country is, a quick way to make a couple hundred large is to shoot an unarmed black teenager. Like George Zimmerman, the sociopaths in our midst are giving large wads of cash to Darren Wilson, the cop who murdered Michael Brown. $200 large, to date, and I am sure there will be more to come, as white America is effectively putting a bounty on young black men, and shooting them in cold blood is turning out to be quite profitable. A couple bullets probably cost ten bucks. Pretty solid ROI.

https://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpg00John Colehttps://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpgJohn Cole2014-08-22 09:17:062014-08-22 09:23:21They Have the Authority to Kill a Minority

@John Cole +0: I think it was an effective way to cover all the bases. Hard to believe both albums were late 80’s releases…and still relevant today. Admittedly, as I’ve aged, it’s a bit difficult to listen to some of the misogynistic stuff on NWA’s playlist.

I thought Zimmerman would get convicted of some watered-down bullshit that would never have flown if he’d shot a white man (manslaughter instead of murder, that kind of thing), but I was actually dumb enough to think he’d be convicted of something.

This guy? There’s always hope, I suppose, but not much of it. (Zimmerman wasn’t even a cop: Wilson is, which means the chances are even lower).

I pretty much have no hope for justice in this case. Between this, Jordan Davis, Trayvon Martin, and god knows how many incidents since then, the country’s true colors seem to be showing through, and it shows that the majority of our fellow Americans are apathetic at best and violently hostile at worst to the plights of their fellow American, the browner they are.

Racism isn’t dead. It might not be the law anymore, but it’s still the fucking rule.

I asked this in a previous thread, and I’ll ask it again. Is there ANY documented case of a white cop getting convicted of fatally shooting (hell, killing in any fashion) a black male? Serious question, b/c IANAL but nothing rings a bell at all….

But the enduring Confederate influence on American politics goes far beyond a few rhetorical tropes. The essence of the Confederate worldview is that the democratic process cannot legitimately change the established social order, and so all forms of legal and illegal resistance are justified when it tries.

That worldview is alive and well. During last fall’s government shutdown and threatened debt-ceiling crisis, historian Garry Wills wrote about our present-day Tea Partiers: “The presiding spirit of this neo-secessionism is a resistance to majority rule.”

The Confederate sees a divinely ordained way things are supposed to be, and defends it at all costs. No process, no matter how orderly or democratic, can justify fundamental change.

When in the majority, Confederates protect the established order through democracy. If they are not in the majority, but have power, they protect it through the authority of law. If the law is against them, but they have social standing, they create shams of law, which are kept in place through the power of social disapproval. If disapproval is not enough, they keep the wrong people from claiming their legal rights by the threat of ostracism and economic retribution. If that is not intimidating enough, there are physical threats, then beatings and fires, and, if that fails, murder.

Racism isn’t dead. It might not be the law anymore, but it’s still the fucking rule.

Said this before, but I’m actually embarrassed at how long it’s taken me to understand that the white backlash since the Nixon era really has continued Jim Crow in all but name, much like the post-Reconstruction system preserved slavery in all but name. No, I didn’t have to wait until Ferguson to realize it, but some time into the Obama presidency.

Republicans in general have been amazingly effective at promoting cowardice as bravery and vice versa. Stocking up on guns and ammo out of worry of phantom enemies at all sides? Shoot First, Ask Questions Never policy because every potential threat is a lethal one in your eyes? Discarding any sense of diplomacy because society destroying threats are always perceived as just being on the other side of the border? All the heights of bravery in this Republican Dominated world we live in.

(And yes, “Republican Dominated”. Almost all of this shit has hardened my conviction that they still own this country nigh onto top-to-bottom. Even Obama, for all that he can do, has his office neutered because the GOP has a tantrum and nearly everyone, including far too many goddamn Dems/Liberals/Etc. have decided it must all be Obama’s fault for making them tantrum/not waving a wand and stopping the tantrums cold. The Ferguson situation is just a microcosm of how the country continues to be so easily seduced to the conservative way of thinking, if they needed seducing in the first place).

Two dozen protesters — most of them armed — from a gun club named after the founder of the original Black Panther Party peacefully marched through parts of South Dallas on Wednesday.

The open-carry rally was organized by the Huey P. Newton Gun Club to promote self-defense and community policing in response to recent police shootings, both nationally and locally.

Police monitored the black-clad demonstrators, some of whom had rifles slung over their shoulders. As they walked down MLK Boulevard and Malcolm X Boulevard in the blistering heat, many chanted “black power” and “justice for Michael Brown,” the black teenager fatally shot by police this month in suburban St. Louis. His death has touched off a string of often-violent protests in that area.

While the Dallas marchers frequently chanted Brown’s name, they said their main goal was to shed light on local shootings by police. Dallas County leaders recently announced that they are looking into ways to change how they investigate shootings involving police officers.

“We think that all black people have the right to self-defense and self-determination,” said Huey Freeman, a march organizer. “We believe that we can police ourselves and bring security to our own communities.”

Freeman said Wednesday’s marchers planned to patronize several South Dallas businesses to keep their money in the community and teach their neighbors about their “right to self-defense.”

At one point, the group stopped at Elaine’s Kitchen, and one of the organizers told those who were armed to display their weapons in a “safe, disciplined manner.”

Several car drivers passing by the area honked and waved at the protesters.

Established about three months ago, the Huey P. Newton Gun Club calls for an end to shootings by police of unarmed individuals — particularly blacks. It also asks people to consider carrying weapons “to protect themselves,” according to a news release.

“We need to arm ourselves, not to attack anybody, but in self-defense,” said Darrin X, a representative of the New Black Panther Party. “We can’t let people just come into our community, whether they are law enforcement or not, and just gun our people down and there is no accountability.”

Dallas police officers appeared to follow the demonstrators in unmarked police cars. Toward the beginning of the 90-minute demonstration, a couple of police cars temporarily blocked off MLK Boulevard so the protesters could safely cross the street.

Let’s have them also register people to vote since so many states allow gun permits as voter ID’s and we can have a real righteous pants-shitting by the right.

A recent decision from the Texas Supreme Court has ruled that at-will employees can’t sue their employer for fraud over the loss of their jobs. In his opinion, Chief Justice Nathan Hecht held that “while an employee can sue an employer for fraud in some situations… [a] claim cannot be based on illusory promises of continued at-will employment.”….

If only it was just the 27%. That might represent the unshakable floor, but it still is far too goddamn apparent that far, far, far more than that still justifies this shit under the ‘thug’ rule. You saw how easily the well was poisoned against Brown. How easily the Zimmerman trial instead became a trial on Trayvon Martin and found him guilty of his own murder.

We’ve come far less of a way than hoped. Blatant racism may not be for polite company anymore, but it’s still amazingly good for politics and celebrated outright if you use the right words.

EDIT: I mean, it’s goddamn embarrassing how fucking widespread the ‘Blacks are inherently violent’ sentiment is, once an incident like this comes to scratch the surface.

But the GOP can’t keep winning with no policy plan and negative ideas. They just can’t. Unless we become a 3rd world country.

I’m as pissed as anyone about how fucking backward the overall response has been to these shootings, but I’d also like to hope that the hate is getting more and more concentrated amongst fewer and fewer people. It’s certainly true about gay marriage, so maybe race will follow slowly.

Or maybe I woke up on the Pollyanna side of the bed. That would be very unlike me.

The current legal structure was clearly set up to make more or less completely sure that a white cop could shoot any minority person without worrying about it. It’s pretty clear that was deliberately done across a lot of the old south. Once formal segregation was abolished that was the fallback to keep control.

The only angle left is probably obstruction of justice. The Ferguson police force clearly did nothing to try to find out what really happened and erased all evidence. That the Feds can go after them for.

But to me the important thing to note is the connection of this to twitter anger article below. Kevin Drum and others forget that a lot of people are furious because the system has been rigged – they know their getting the short of the end stick and are angry and lashing out. The right is really good at finding people to blame – the left less so.

And in turn I’d guess that’s why Obama is finding he can’t lead. He wanted to lead the middle when there was really no middle. So he ends up encouraging one side, who still hates him, and not really rallying the other side.

The only angle left is probably obstruction of justice. The Ferguson police force clearly did nothing to try to find out what really happened and erased all evidence. That the Feds can go after them for.

But even with that, there’s always the possibility of jury nullification by any crackers that make their way through selection.

That “Not a Tea Party, a Confederate Party” article points out that in a way, it never really was – well, depending on how blatant “blatant” is:

Legislators, of course, express horror at the murder of [abortion] doctors, just as the pillars of 1960s Mississippi society expressed horror at the Mississippi Burning murders, and the planter aristocrats shook their heads sadly at the brutality of the KKK and the White Leagues. But the strategy is all of a piece and always has been. Change cannot stand, no matter what documents it is based on or who votes for them. If violence is necessary, so be it.

It’s not just since the sixties that white racists have learned to dogwhistle and say “oh my, no, we have nothing to do with that, how dare you imply that we’re the kind of people who would…” That was part of the point of the white hood. Respectable people doing in private what they didn’t want to admit to in public.

And yet, like today, the indignation was mostly perfunctory, just thin face-saving bullshit.

@Face: Considering the law for employees, most of whom are at will in this country, this is not surprising. The surprising thing is that someone actually tried to challenge it. Most jobs in this country do not have to give a reason for firing you.

@AliceBlue: I’m not saying this doesn’t happen but a Union rep advising a member not to perform a required part of his/her job seems…unusual. Writing the report with the union rep reading over your shoulder so you don’t say stupid, self-prejudicial stuff, sure, that happens all the time but our rep (teachers’ union) was always careful to explain to people that you just can’t not do the required reporting which is, in itself, a firing offense and proper documentation is your friend.

And yes, “Republican Dominated”. Almost all of this shit has hardened my conviction that they still own this country nigh onto top-to-bottom.

The right has been dominant in this country pretty much forever: the most we’ve ever gotten is power-sharing agreements, like after the Great Depression, which they will renege on the minute they feel strong enough.

Last I looked, Zimmerman wasn’t doing so hot. Divorced, in major debt and without solid employment. He has had several brushes with the law also. I don’t see his life as a success story for what the right wing has given him. It won’t be for Wilson either. Neither will be able to do anything but run around on the fringes looking for handouts from racists. They will both also be looking over their shoulders for the rest of their lives.

Assuming that’s correct, no state, municipality, town, borough, or village should put up with that in a police contract. You shoot someone – you file a report immediately. End of story, which it was for the person who got shot. Just because you enforce the laws, doesn’t mean you’re above them and that attitude among police officers has got to stop. This is not to say there aren’t good cops. I think with most professions there’s 30% who are outstanding, 60% who do what they need to do to keep their jobs and 10% shitbags. I believe the unions perform an important service, but it would be nice if now and again they recognize that some of their brethren aren’t worth defending.

Too many on this post are giving up without assessing why this is happening and continues to happen. The demographics in our country are making the right wing tribalists very upset and they are acting out on it in increasing ways. It is, however, the battle of losers fighting more and more as a rear guard. They are pathetic and weakening over time. Don’t give away our power or underestimate our strength. Yes, they are dangerous and vile and all the things we see — but they are losing and are losers. Don’t grant them even the smallest transient success. We keep on keeping on. That is it.

@Punchy: Is there ANY documented case of a white cop getting convicted of fatally shooting (hell, killing in any fashion) a black male?

Would a Hispanic kid do?

The 1973 death of Santos Rodriguez was almost unspeakably barbaric. The 12-year-old and his brother David were picked up from their grandparents’ house in what was then Little Mexico (now Uptown) in the early hours of July 24 and taken to a Fina station on Cedar Springs Road, where someone had just stolen a few bucks from a soda machine. Officer Darrell Cain and his partner knew the boys’ history of shoplifting and burglary and figured they might be involved. A trip would be just the thing to jog their memories.

David Rodriguez, now 53, recounted Cain’s interrogation techniques in a recent interview with The Dallas Morning News.

They were trying to force us to say that we burglarized a Coke machine out of $8. We had nothing to do with that that night. He was mostly questioning my brother. When he wasn’t getting the answers he wanted, that is when he pulled out his gun. He opened the cylinder with me right next to him. I couldn’t really tell if he was emptying it or filling it. He put the gun up to his [Santos’] head. He said, “Now you are going to tell him the truth.”

The first time he pulled the trigger of the .357-magnum revolver, there was the click of an empty chamber. The next shot entered his head just below his left ear, killing the boy. Cain said the shooting was an accident. Later that year, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to a whopping five years in prison.

I was six in 1973, and I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t like that in Dallas. (And I lived near West Dallas at the time, and later I had plenty of Hispanic friends that lived there.) I expect it’s the same across the South, at least. The odd part is I always assumed they would shoot me, because trigger-happy and SOP. If I had had really dark skin, I always figured I might as well have shot myself and spared everyone the drama.

I have a degree in US History from Harvard, with honors, and my field of study was the Civil War. I have never heard it put quite that way, and I am sitting here blinking in astonishment at how perfectly that sums it up. Christ. So fucking true.

Last I looked, Zimmerman wasn’t doing so hot. Divorced, in major debt and without solid employment.

Through his own stupidity: IIRC, the right wing was happy to rain money down on him (heck, his American flag painting sold on ebay for like a hundred thousand dollars). Ditto his brush-ins with the law: he was too stupid to take the gift he’d been given, calm the fuck down and live the rest of his life without attracting attention, he had to threaten his wife and her father, and then his girlfriend (and was thrown yet more undeserved lifelines when they declined to press charges).

He was given every possible break, and the big one is – he wasn’t convicted. The fact that he still managed to fuck up the breaks he was given eloquently demonstrates what a low-watt bulb he is, but the point stands.

ETA: you could possibly see him as a real life version of the bad guy from To Kill A Mockingbird, and hopefully that’s what Wilson will be if he gets away with it. Atticus notes the fact that everyone knows he’s full of shit and just wants him to get back to his hovel and stop bothering them. But the bottom line is – he walked.

I guess some of it is the inflexibility of the two-party system. The Democrats should have gone the way of the Whigs after the Civil War, but there was no electable alternative to the Republicans. So the Democrats, apart from having a representative of theirs in the White House (Pres. Johnson), gained Congress in 1874 and won the popular vote in 1876 – probably because of the Panic of 1873. So if you wanted an alternative to the hard money/capitalist policies of the republicans you had to buy the whole confederate baggage as well.

@El Cid: Thanks for this;for a couple of days I’ve been wanting to respond to one of those email forwards from a relative of mine. It’s a piece from the WSJ about the Black Panthers raising their heads in Ferguson. Do you know if they’ve actually had a presence in Ferguson? I am wanting to rebut those forwards of hers.

While she is a very strong Republican/conservative her email forwards are generally a couple of notches up from some from others. As she said to me on the phone the other day when I responded to her email forward saying that Islam was a government not a religion and how we in America better be afraid,” I’m as educated and as informed as you!! This was just as we were getting educated about ISIS, which, of course,is truly the icing on conservatives/Republicans cake.. Because it justifies all their fears of the “other”.

I can’t believe there are folks who believe Wilson will actually end up getting convicted of something over this.

Time will tell. But that’s just one battle. The other battle can easily be won. And that’s the battle of changing how Ferguson is run. They already are organizing voter registration drives there. And that’s how you eventually will change Ferguson from being run by people who seemingly is looking at African-Americans as 2nd hand citizens.

That really is the big story. And that, African-Americans taking control of the city council and the PD, would piss off the racists much more than what happens to Darrel Wilson.

@El Cid: Oh, what a fabulous idea! There’sa second amendment remedy I could get behind! Still wonder out loud if these shooting victims aren ‘t standing in for the Blah -Person-in-Chief. I hate thinking it, but there it is. I have felt l should apologize for my whiteness often. Lately, it’s a continuous loop

So if you wanted an alternative to the hard money/capitalist policies of the republicans you had to buy the whole confederate baggage as well.

What made it worse was that after their deal with the devil in 1877, Republicans spent decades getting progressively worse and worse on the racial issues, ever-closer to “the Confederate baggage.” That’s one reason why people like Richard Wright went and tried out the Communist Party in the twenties – it was literally the only game in town. Also why a number of black people started voting Democrat when FDR gave them a reason.

The Gilded Age really was a horrific era, with a political system dominated by “awful” and “worse.” That domination started to break up at the turn of the century on economics, but it took another forty or fifty years before either party could legitimately claim the civil rights mantle again.

The problem is that they don’t seem to be losing at all. They may be dwindling in raw numbers, but they have an outright stranglehold on our politics top-down. And that’s not even including those who oppose them by label in public, but still supposed nearly all their policies, prejudices, and psychoses enough to support them.

Outside of ‘polite company’, we’re still the same goddamn country, and perhaps on the road to being worse now.

There’s something truly, deeply fucked up about a worldview that believes Islam is responsible for ISIS, but not for the Peshmerga militias who’ve been fighting them; for the Taliban, but not for the Northern Alliance; for the people who raped a journalist in Cairo, but not for the people who came to her aid; for the mob that killed four Americans in Benghazi, but not for the mob that protested after his death and even marched to the nearby compound of the suspected perpetrators and threw them out on their ass; for the people who celebrated 9/11, but not the people who held vigils for its victims; for the Muslim who left a bomb in Times Square four years ago, but not for the Muslim who was the first person to call in the threat. Somehow, all the people in the former category are representative of their religion; the others… don’t even exist. As you can see when you hear them screaming “why won’t they condemn the bad ones? Why won’t they condemn the bad ones?”

They can dress it up in whatever fancy quotes from their favorite RWNJ bloggers they want, but it doesn’t change the fact that people who think this way are fucking bigots who, if they’d been born on the other side of the world, would’ve been the ones dancing in the streets in support of ISIS as it murders its way through all the religions it deems Unworthy.

Yes, they are louder and they seemingly get a lot of attention. But they are disappearing even as they scream and act out ever louder. It will probably get worse as the tidal surge of demographics overwhelm them.

Yes, our country has suffered and will suffer the pain of their tribal angst. Both the media and our politics will seemingly amplify their tantrums. Just like the storm surge however — they will be swallowed up by changes that they will not be able to hold at bay. We do ourselves no favors by helping them propagate their message with hand wringing “all is lost” wailing. It is just not so.

My understanding is that there are at least a few members of the Black Panthers in Ferguson. Not sure of their numbers or whether or not they’re local. From everything I’ve heard, they’ve been a positive presence during the protests.

I’m just staggered by the incompetence of the Ferguson police force. Or maybe incompetence is the wrong word. When it’s so thorough, you have to think it’s deliberate.

Incompetence is the right word. I’m sure the powers that be in Ferguson don’t consider what’s happened in the last couple of weeks to be a success. They’re supposed to keep things under control quietly, not provoke days of disturbances and bad attention.

Now our idea of success might include stuff like policing the town without brutalizing most of the residents and efficiently dealing with a senseless police shooting. I don’t think anyone those cops answer to cares much about any of that.

Funny how the ‘reasons’ for why a black youth gets shot is along the lines of why a woman got raped (If only she wasn’t dressed provocatively…if only she wasn’t walking in the ‘bad’ part of town…did she somehow bring it on herself.)

If only the kid hadn’t been wearing a hoodie..if only he hadn’t been walking in the ‘wrong’ part of town….if only he hadn’t of somehow brought it on himself by..(fill in the blank.)

@El Cid: I applaud what they are doing. They need to maintain the highest degree of firearm safety. The 1st time one of them accidently points a weapon in the vicinity of a police officer, they will shoot him/her.

I’m as pissed as anyone about how fucking backward the overall response has been to these shootings, but I’d also like to hope that the hate is getting more and more concentrated amongst fewer and fewer people. It’s certainly true about gay marriage, so maybe race will follow slowly.

It has already happened with race.

We’ve moved from violent retribution, if minorities tried to speak up to a more of a “meh” attitude, because a lot of white folks feel that (a) what happened to the Brown kid was bad, but (b) why is this one incidence of a kid being in the ‘wrong place, at the wrong time’ getting so much attention.

There are folks, who really do feel the cop was justified that a big scary black youth was attacking him and deserved to be shot, but I think for the most part white America just cannot understand that the system treats people very differently based on race and economic standing.

it shows that the majority of our fellow whiteAmericans are apathetic at best and violently hostile at worst to the plights of their fellow American

Name it.
Shame it.

From what I can tell, about 40% of white Americans are committed to white supremacy. That is a disgusting, ugly number and explains why American apartheid will not just fade away when whites are no longer the majority.
Another 45% want to stay in their happy bubble and ignore what is going down on the streets of cities across America. The more they dig into this position in the face of the violence, the more likely they are to move into the first group.
Finally about 15% of whites are committed to the struggle, with varying levels of awareness because privilege is an invisible backpack, it takes experiences that take you out of your normal perspective to make it visible.
And sadly that 15% contains a small number, maybe 3% who mouth platitudes about racism and struggle but for some weird psychological reasons are so in love with the notion of violent revolution that they try to incite class or race based violence, showing that they seek to remove a real or imagined mote of apathy from progressive coalition leaders’ eyes while ignoring a big old log of white privilege and narcissism from their own.

Said this before, but I’m actually embarrassed at how long it’s taken me to understand that the white backlash since the Nixon era really has continued Jim Crow in all but name, much like the post-Reconstruction system preserved slavery in all but name.

But let’s not bury the lede here: things are actually getting worse on a lot of measures.

The 1970s saw the biggest increase in individual African American household wealth. But the 2000s (Bush era) saw a destruction of household wealth for African Americans.

Affirmative action dismantled piece by piece.

Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program for DOT contracts shredded to worthlessness.

Unions busted and shriveled, pushing blue collar families into the ranks of the working poor.

Whites feeling free to let their racist freak flag fly. My mother was racist but I never heard racial slurs or racist rants as a small child in the early 80s. But just look at the internet now. Racist hate talk is a form of microaggression and an incitement that does real harm.

The rise of hate radio in the 1990s. Replaced by Fox News Channel in the 2000s pumping Rwanda-level incitement propaganda.

The end of the fairness doctrine and other rules that kept quality, non propaganda news on the airwaves.

The steeplejacking of the 70s and 80s, Moral Majority and the theocracy movement’s apotheosis during the 1990s.

It’s all reactionary, synergistic with the rentier class’ reaction to the loss of their status during the 1970s, the only era in which they actually lost ground, holding just a smidgen less of the national wealth in their hot little hands. By impoverishing people and putting them in distress, you heighten the xenophobia and racial/ethnic tensions and you make them putty for manipulators like Assemblies of God and other bottom feeder churches. AoG is pretty equal opportunity evil but some of the white evangelical denoms are very tribalistic, like the Boer churches with their racist ideology. Once a victim narrative is established, instead of helping people help themselves they repeatedly reopen the wound and drive the person into a state of hysteria in which any abuse against others is justified because they are only defending themselves.

@gelfling545: I’ve got a guy in my unit who is an ex state trooper (and an asshole). Needless to say his attitudes towards reports and paperwork is hella different from most of the rest of us. (That said, some of the rest of us are a little too casual about this shit, writing down what you think you heard someone say, but that’s another matter.)

“The Cape Colony was unusual in southern Africa in that its laws prohibited any discrimination on the basis of race and, unlike the Boer republics, elections were held according to the non-racial Cape Qualified Franchise system, whereby suffrage qualifications applied universally, regardless of race.[…]

[T]he discovery of diamonds around Kimberley and gold in the Transvaal led to a later return to instability, particularly because they fueled the rise to power of the ambitious colonialist Cecil Rhodes. As Cape Prime Minister, Rhodes curtailed the multi-racial franchise, and his expansionist policies set the stage for the Second Boer War.”

Under unified government the Boer faction imposed Apartheid for close to a century.

They were not a majority of the population of South Africa.

Dixiecrat Southern Strategy Republicans like Jesse Helms were enormous supporters of the Apartheid state in its waning years.

@dww44: NBP have been working with the community as peacemakers in Ferguson. They worked with pastors to try to persuade angry, frightened young people to stand down. (At the same time, outside agitators like RCP were actively trying to rile them up until Johnson and French successfully executed a policy of identifying and selectively arresting RCP members and other agitators for failure to disperse. The strategy seems to have worked very well.)

That really is the big story. And that, African-Americans taking control of the city council and the PD, would piss off the racists much more than what happens to Darrel Wilson.

This is why they have to skree harder over fake xrays and the lot, because African-Americans in leadership positions stopped the violence, de-escalated the situation, and are now rebuilding civic organizations right in front of our eyes. Can’t have that be the story.

I think hate radio, TV and blogs more than anything else is to blame for the transition from “mom was racist but didn’t rant about it all the time” to the present. They get ten new stories a day about some new Liberal Elitist crime against white people and the constitution, plus they’re put into touch with all the crazies like them, plus the comments section for Two Minute Hate. They’re fucking saturated with it like they never were before.

@Waynski: Forcing cops to file reports under circumstances where that report implicates them in a crime probably has fifth amendment problems. With that in mind, I think the lack of a report in this case is very telling. It may well be used against Officer Wilson.

@Bill: So other officers can file a report and note that the officer involved in the shooting took the 5th. But none of this “Report, what report? Meh, we’ll file something in a week and a half after we’ve heard everyone else’s story” bullshit.

@Bill: With greater respect and greater allowances for true accidents, comes greater responsibility than Joe Sidewalk Citizen. Cops increasingly seem to be demanding all the perks of their position while refusing pointblank to attempt or put up with any of the greater responsibilities or difficulties associated with same.

ETA: That is to say, fill out the damn paperwork Badgie Boys. You keep telling us the innocent have nothing to fear and to hop-to when so indicated by a higher legal authority. I wanna see air beneath those flat feet.

@TooManyJens: This is a fair point, and a pragmatic way to deal with the problem. Unfortunately the blue wall of silence may make it difficult, which gets to yet another layer of terrible problems in our justice system.

@Bill: They do rather want it both ways. The presumption of innocence, the assumption that such behavior is just a necessary part of the job, the pleas for time for the process to work its way through the system and then then are discovered not filling out the forms, ticking off the boxes, spinning the cogs and moving said process along. Charming little exemplars of the worst of the breed: We enforce the law, not obey it. Near variant of saving the village.

Demographics donot solve the issue by themselves but that assumes that everyone just lays down throws out ALL of our laws and society and lets some crazy white minority just take over. That is not going to happen. Sure, we have to work . Nothing – NOTHING comes without work and effort. That said, your paranoia does not mean that we are just magically going to become South Africa either.

@scav: Yeah, it seems to be an unfortunate feature in the profession right now. Last night I had an interesting Facebook discussion with a cop friend, in which he insisted that what Wilson did is consistent with his training. I actually don’t doubt that it was, but I noted that is a huge part of the problem. If cops are trained to (1) always assume their on the verge of being killed; and (2) respond to that threat by using deadly force, a whole lot of innocent people are going to die.

Our conversation ended rather tersely when my friend warned: “Be careful you’re poking a cop.” Which is so telling, and such a pervasive attitude it seems. Police are not “the law.”